The Fact-Checking Universe in Spring 2012

How can fact-checking have the biggest impact in fostering a more reasoned debate over important public issues? Should it aim mainly to educate the public, to change political behavior, or to make reporting less timid—or all three?

Public Interest Obligations

The Rise of Political Fact-checking

Through devices such as “Pinocchios” and “Pants-on-Fire” verdicts, journalists have formally asserted their right to adjudicate the truth or falsehood of the carefully-constructed campaign narratives of political candidates.

Misinformation and Fact-checking

Reclaiming The Airwaves

The current model of giving broadcasters access to the airwaves in exchange for certain public interest obligations no longer works. This paper explores ways that public media policy can be updated for the Internet age.

The Media Policy Initiative, part of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, formulates policy and regulatory reforms to foster the development of a healthy media that satisfies the needs of democracy in the 21st century. MPI’s fellows and staff research, analyze, and promote policies that are committed to maximizing the public interest potential of innovative media, supported by partnerships with communities, researchers, industry, and public interest groups. By studying the social and economic ramifications of policymaking – particularly on poor, rural, and other underserved constituencies – MPI provides in-depth, objective research, analysis, and findings for policy decisionmakers and the general public.
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Authors: Kristian Davis Bailey and Jason SmithOn Tuesday, July 17 we attended the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) demonstration of their new online interface for the uploading of television broadcasters’ “public inspection files” (PIFs). [A video of the demonstration has been archived on...

Our work at the Media Policy Initiative has been in support of both broadcaster transparency and advancing the idea that journalism schools can be news producers, so we couldn’t have been happier when the two ideas intersected in a piece produced by Kent State University undergraduate and

New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative continues to submit comments to organizations such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on subjects relevant to MPI's extensive work in the field of media policy.

Here are recent comments submitted to government agencies on behalf of the Media Policy Initiative.